Tench Coxe

Coxe, Tench (kŏks) [key], 1755–1824, American political economist, b. Philadelphia. He entered his father's mercantile business in 1776, but after 1790, when he became assistant to Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, he remained in public office, although he never attained an important office. A firm believer in a balanced national economy, he supported Hamilton in his efforts to put the finances of the country on a sound basis. Politically, however, he was Anti-Federalist. He assisted Jefferson on two reports to Congress—one on fisheries, the other on foreign commerce. In Coxe's Enquiry into the Principles on Which a Commercial System for the United States of America Should Be Founded (1787), he first urged the necessity of an economy balanced between agriculture and manufacturing. Many of his essays are collected in his Views of the United States (1794). His Statement of the Arts and Manufactures of the United States of America … 1810 is an official digest of the census data collected in that year.